S.O.D Upcoming Exhibition

Talks of this years exhibition for S.O.D have been in the works for about 6/7 months so far, up until recently we decided on a theme for the exhibition which is to be turning annoying things into nice, essentially negative things into positive. For the exhibition everyone involved in the collective has the chance to create a piece of work that fits in with the theme.

Both me and Jon decided this was something we could work on together to create something that turned everyday negative things into something more uplifting and positive.

Initially our ideas began to focus more around technology more specifically our mobile phones, because although these are useful and help us everyday, they are also something that can be harmful to us, psychologically. Using our phones too much can make us anti-social, as although we think that social media is connecting us in more ways than one in the virtual world, realistically it can be doing quite the opposite in the real world. We talked about how phones can be a distraction during the day, especially during uni/work etc. as constant notifications can take our focus away from whatever we're working on. 

The reason why we decided to focus on phones more specifically social media is because this is something that affects the majority of people but more so because it's something that we both felt affects us on a regular basis. The constant need to keep up to date with social media profiles, worrying about how people will think of you when you post pictures on Instagram for example, stressing out because you haven't messaged someone back in the past 10 minutes.

We started to put more of a focus on notifications in particular, it seems that these can be considered a negative thing in day to day life. Often they're unnecessary and excessive, not just visually but audibly as well, hearing the *ding* or vibration every 5/10 minutes can become extremely distracting and also annoying.

An idea I had was to take the format of a notification (the annoying thing) and switch out the content for an uplifting/satirical (positive) message that could hopefully brighten up someones day. E.g. an Snapchat notification that might say 'Missed something? Don't worry it still happened', something that might make be humorous but at the same time makes a comment on our obsessions over our phones and social media.

Rough initial sketches